Australia criticized over child asylum seeker plan

By ROD McGUIRK | June 2, 2011 | 10:58 PM EDT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia came under fire from the U.N. children's aid agency and human rights advocates Friday over its plan to send child asylum seekers to Malaysia without their parents under a refugee swap deal being negotiated with the Southeast Asian nation.

Australia wants to deter asylum seekers from traveling to the continent by boat by sending hundreds of new arrivals to Malaysia.

The Malaysian government has reached an in-principle agreement to take 800 asylum seekers off Australian hands in return for Australia resettling 4,000 registered refugees from among more than 90,000 languishing in Malaysia.

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen confirmed that the 800 will include vulnerable children who make the perilous boat journey to Australia without parents or adult guardians.

"I don't want unaccompanied minors, I don't want children getting on boats to come to Australia thinking or knowing that there is some sort of exemption in place," Bowen told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television late Thursday.

UNICEF Australia chief executive Norman Gillespie said his agency had been seeking assurances form the government that children would not be sent to Malaysia and was "dismayed and shocked" by Bowen's announcement.

David Mann, executive director of the Melbourne-based advocacy group Refugee and Immigration Center, said that as a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Australia is obliged to act in child asylum seekers' best interests.

"Having signed the Refugee Convention and other international treaties for the protection of children, it's difficult to see how it would be best to expel children unaccompanied from Australia to a country like Malaysia that hasn't signed up to human rights standards and in fact has a poor track record in relation to the treatment of children in the country," Mann told ABC.

It is not clear how many of the more than 6,200 asylum seekers who arrived in Australian by boat last year were unaccompanied children. But many of the new arrivals have extended family in Australia who have been accepted as refugees and provide support networks.

Last month, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay accused Australia of jeopardizing asylum seekers' rights through the deal with Malaysia, which has not signed the Refugee Convention or Convention Against Torture.

Australia has long attracted people from poor, often war-ravaged countries hoping to start a new life. Most are from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran and Iraq, and use Malaysia or Indonesia as a starting point for a dangerous sea journey to Australia.